


dream and drowning

by fallenidol_453



Series: Wordcount Challenge [2]
Category: Elisabeth - Levay/Kunze
Genre: Am Deck der sinkenden Welt slapped me hard enough to write fanfic, Death, Don't copy to another site, Drowning, Gen, Nightmares, Wordcount: 100-500
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:15:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23471563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallenidol_453/pseuds/fallenidol_453
Summary: Franz Joseph dreams, and drowns.
Series: Wordcount Challenge [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1689553
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	dream and drowning

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Elisabeth. All rights belong to Kunze and Levay. Any mistakes to canon in here is entirely my fault. I'm only playing in the sandbox for five minutes.

Franz Joseph dreams.

He stands upon a ship. Water laps at his feet, rising fast to his ankles. All around him, as far as the eye can see, the glories of his family’s empire crumble and rot.

His ears hear a sob, and he makes the mistake of looking down.

Rudolf – _two_ of them, the child and man he grew into – scrabbling for hold at their father’s feet. Their gaze pleads for pity and forgiveness, but they are swept away in the steadily rising water. The cries of thousands follow in their wake, rising in cacophony and despair that Franz Joseph cannot shut out.

The water is at his knees. He finds his hands shackled, unable to swim to safety in this unfathomable landscape. He sees more people crawling toward him, desperate. Their flesh is bone-white, and their courtly clothes waterlogged and stained. He thinks he sees his mother in the ghastly crowd, her indomitable spirit crushed.

A white light pierces down upon him, and he dares to look up. Someone leers down at him, a wicked smile of triumph upon their fair face.

“Was ist das hier?!” he shouts.

A mocking, cruel laugh answers him.

“Ihr sinkendes Schiff, Majestät!”

The more Franz Joseph struggles against the current, the more the water rises. It is past his chest now, up to his throat. This dream is not real, his empire _will not fall_.

But he feels the hands of the dead claw at his legs, threatening to pull him under.

He recognizes more people. His brother Maximilian, his body riddled with the revolutionary’s bullets. Cousin Ludwig, blue-faced and gasping. Cousins Sophie and Maria. If they are here, then—

“Wo ist die Kaiserin!?” he shouts forcefully, struggling to keep his head above water.

All sounds cease abruptly. The dead disappear beneath the water, and it is just him and this mocking being alone in the darkness.

“…Elisabeth? _Meine_ Elisabeth?” the being whispers coldly. They had a distinct human-shape, but the light makes it impossible to determine what they look like. The voice is undeniably male. Soft, yet masculine.

A hot rage fills him. The audacity of this man, to claim his Elisabeth for his own!

“ _Meine_ Elisabeth!”

He screams and shouts his answer like the upset little boy he once was. He will not let _anything_ happen to his wife, he had given her everything she had ever asked for, he loved her—

_But did you truly love her?_

The cruel thought, which spawned unbidden in his head, stops him. His mind is forced to relive their marriage against his will. Every choice he made, every word he spoke. He thought he was giving her the world but all he had accomplished was denying the freedom she craved until she forcibly took it by leaving him.

He finally sees her.

Elisabeth sits at the edge of the precipice, looking off into the black nothingness of his nightmare.

“ _Sisi!_ ”

The water rises over Franz Joseph’s head, and she does not look back.


End file.
